oe starts as a
dependent from the first.

Among animals these _lazzaroni_ are more largely represented still.
Almost every animal is a living poor-house, and harbors one or more
species of _epizoa_ or _entozoa_, supplying them gratis, not only with a
permanent home, but with all the necessaries and luxuries of life.

Why does the naturalist think hardly of the parasites? Why does he speak
of them as degraded, and despise them as the most ignoble creatures in
Nature? What more can an animal do than eat, drink, and die to-morrow?
If under the fostering care and protection of a higher organism it can
eat better, drink more easily, live more merrily, and die, perhaps, not
till the day after, why should it not do so? Is parasitism, after all,
not a somewhat clever _ruse_? Is it not an ingenious way of securing the
benefits of life while evading its responsibilities? And although this
mode of livelihood is selfish, and possibly undignified, can it be said
that it is immoral?

The naturalist's reply to this is brief. Parasitism, he will say, is one
of the gravest crimes in Nature. It is a breach of the law of Evolution.
Thou shalt evolve, thou shalt develop all thy faculties to the full,
thou shalt attain to the highest conceivable perfection of thy race--and
so perfect thy race--this is the first and greatest commandment of
nature. But the parasite has no thought for its race, or for perfection
in any shape or form. It wants two things--food and shelter. How it gets
them is of no moment. Each member lives exclusively on its own account,
an isolated, indolent, selfish, and backsliding life.

The remarkable thing is that Nature permits the community to be taxed in
this way apparently without protest. For the parasite is a consumer pure
and simple. And the "Perfect Economy of Nature" is surely for once at
fault when it encourages species numbered by thousands which produce
nothing for their own or for the general good, but live, and live
luxuriously, at the expense of others?

Now when we look into the matter, we very soon perceive that instead of
secretly countenancing this ingenious device by which parasitic animals
and plants evade the great law of the Struggle for Life, Nature sets her
face most sternly against it. And, instead of allowing the transgressors
to slip through her fingers, as one might at first suppose, she visits
upon them the most severe and terrible penalties. The parasite, she
argues, not only injures i